CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Dozens of men and women from Charlotte were among the thousands of people who attended the March on Washington in 1963. Many were young people ready for social change. Madge Hopkins was one of them.
Hopkins was then 20 years old and a student at Johnson C. Smith University. She told Eyewitness News that the school was a safe place in a segregated community.
"It was a narrow existence because it was so segregated and you were not allowed to go beyond your boundaries by your parents, because of fear of what would happen to you," Hopkins said.
Around the same time, civil rights leaders were fighting against racial injustice and in the summer of 1963, Hopkins joined them in the March on Washington.
She said it was the first time she saw white people and black people united and it gave her hope.
"This is not just a black fight, this is a fight by all people that we will be equal," she said.
She listened to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as he called for America to let freedom ring.
"It stirred up your emotion, because you wanted to be free. All those things you dreamed of, all those things you've seen in the movies, the places you want to go. (The speech) says, 'I can have those things, I will be free to do those things,'" she said.
Hopkins wouldn't see immediate social change, but Wednesday she said King's words were seeds that produced a fruitful future for her children.
"My daughter and my son would not have gone to Appalachian State, Duke, or Chapel Hill. The schools they attended this would not have happened. We would still be suppressed," she said.
Several other students from Johnson C. Smith traveled to the March on Washington in 1963. Hear their comments here.
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